Brewed: Modern Times Hoppy Wheat

Brewed: Modern Times Hoppy Wheat

In early March, my wife coerced me into tackling the Whole30 Challenge with her. For the uninitiated, the Whole30 Challenge is basically a 30 day, ultra-strict paleo diet, so no beer, bread, grains of any kind, or dairy and enough vegetables to scare a small child into thinking all the candy in the world was gone.

For whatever reason, my order took about 6 days compared to the usual 2 to make it from Northern Brewer in Minneapolis to my house, so this batch turned into a rare weeknight brewday in order to get it brewed, dry hopped, dry hopped again, and kegged before the end of my tenure as Vegetarian In Chief.

Brewing was pretty uneventful. I’ve been struggling with a few batches overattenuating on me, though I thought I’d nailed that down to a once-trusted thermometer now reading about 6°F low at mash temps, though this batch proved I’m not completely rid of that problem. I’ll probably break down and order a Thermapen to rid myself of any further doubt. With 45 seconds of low-flow oxygen and a healthy, 1L pitch of Wyeast 1056, this brew fermented down to 1.008 from 1.052, or about 84.62% apparent attenuation. The next batch I make I’ll be revisiting how long the wort spends below 170°F during sparging just to rule out anything odd. I typically try to heat the first runnings up to 170+ as quick as I can to denature the enzymes in lieu of doing a mash-out, but I’m down to thinking either I have a second bunk thermometer, or I need to start doing a mash-out step.

Despite sounding terribly thin, this beer tastes amazing just at just 18 days old, and just in time for our first day of spring temperatures. I double purged everything with C02 when racking and dry-hopping.It is lacking a little body, but I don’t perceive it to be as dry as the numbers suggest, and the citra/centennial hop combo lends some amount of stickiness to the mouthfeel.

It’s been really great reading updates on how Modern Times has gone from concept to reality, and I wish them the best of luck as they get closer to their first production batches. With recipes like this, they no doubt have a great future ahead of them.

Spring of Eternal Winter (Wheat)

Batch Size

Boil Time

IBU

SRM

Est. OG

Est. FG

ABV

6 gal

60 min

38.3 IBU

5.3 SRM

1.049 SG

1.012 SG

4.80 %

Fermentables

Name

Amount

White Wheat Malt

5.5 lbs

Pale Malt (2 Row) US

4 lbs

Caravienne Malt

0.75 lbs

Hops

Name

Amount

Time

Use

Form

Alpha %

HopShot

5 oz

60 min

Boil

Pellet

2.4

Citra

2 oz

5 days

Dry Hop

Pellet

12

Citra

2 oz

0 min

Boil

Pellet

12

Centennial

1 oz

0 min

Boil

Pellet

10

Citra

1 oz

7 days

Dry Hop

Pellet

12

Yeast

Name

Lab

Attenuation

Temperature

American Ale (1056)

Wyeast Labs

75%

60°F - 72°F

Notes

2013.04.08 : Made a 1.5L starter on the stir plate. 500mL will be pulled and crashed for the Iron Ranger brewday for the coming weekend.